Morality, Buddhism and Daoism

Morality, according to the Dalai Lama, goes like this: If you can, always help others, but at the very least, do no harm. From my weak understanding of Taoism, morality is generally far more complex. I'm also guessing that other Buddhist branches add caveats about doing no harm: the Shaolin tradition, for example.

I want to adopt a moral approach to life, obviously starting small and working up. I am considering a more organised approach by finding some group or other to help me. I know myself well enough that I'll just procrastinate if I work alone. The problem I have is that I don't trust organised religion. I think this is a problem that I've had with adopting much of the Taoist things that come to me through my Tai Chi. Can I really trust the teacher? I'm not suggesting that my teacher (or his teacher) is out to purposefully mislead, just that a teacher has a particularly complex situation when it comes to religion. Religion is not a science, where you can actually teach real methods that will give you a correct answer. Religion is an utterly personal experience, no two people seem to have it in the same way.

Science and religion do appear to have some crossover somewhere around philosophy. Philosophy is supposed to be meta-science, although science itself often uses meta-techniques to elicit the technique that will eventually give the answer. Hence the grey area between science and philosophy. Then philosophy is generally based on some personal belief, for example the Platonic forms, Descartes' existance of the mind without the body. But even with that relationship, the best a theological teacher can give is a historical account of the tradition in question. Anything more than that history, particularly where religion dictates how to live, should be viewed as the teacher's personal opinion.

My other problem with adopting the moral way is that I can forsee that I'm going to get shat on from a great height by those who are less moral. For myself I think I could come to not mind about that, but I have other people relying on me. If I end up doing more time at work for no more pay, I know my relationships will suffer. If I earn less money then it will impact my family's standard of living. I can think of various situations where the people I work with might suffer because of my morality towards someone else.

Just to record the fact, I've considered on numerous occasions the idea of leaving and joining some form of monastic life.